The three East Coast rappers who inspired Tom Hardy’s voice in ‘Venom’
Tom Hardy is a legendary actor who has appeared in a number of incredible films. From Inception to Lawless, Hardy is one of the most preeminent British actors. However, the UK actor also has a strange love for hip-hop.
Hip-hop and Hollywood have intersected on several occasions. One lyricist who has appeared on the big screen several times is Busta Rhymes. Aside from being a renowned musician and highly skilled rapper, the ‘Gimme Some More’ rhymer is also an esteemed actor who has made many movie appearances.
The Brooklyn native has been featured in Shaft, Halloween: Resurrection, The Mod Squad, and more. However, he is not the only emcee who successfully transitioned into Hollywood. Other MCs who have made the transition include Method Man and Redman. Strangely, one thing all these lyricists have in common is that they inspired the voice of one movie character. In an interview, British actor Tom Hardy revealed that these three rhymers helped him create the voice of the alien villain Venom.
The extraterrestrial antagonist, who hides behind the human guise of Eddie Brock, is a menace, and Hardy voices both the alien symbiote and the more peaceful Brock. That said, while trying to craft the intonations and cadences of Venom, Hardy once revealed that Method Man, Redman, and Busta Rhymes all influenced the final sound of the villain’s voice.
The first instalment of Venom was released in 2018, and the sequel, Venom: Let There Be Carnage, was a big hit at the box office. As such, in an interview on BBC Radio with Ali Plumb, Hardy explained how Wu-Tang’s Method Man influenced Venom’s gravelly voice along with other MCs.
Opening up about how he replicates the eerie and scary voice of Venom, Hardy told Plumb, “So, I mix a little bit of Busta Rhymes, a little bit of Method and Redman, a little bit of James Brown, and ever so slightly, an element of Richard Burton.”
Although it’s hard for many to imagine, Tom Hardy is a huge fan of hip-hop and once pursued a career in rap music as Tommy No. 1 before he switched to acting. However, during this period he worked with an industry figure who used to manage Lauryn Hill and actually recorded an unfathomable amount of unreleased hip-hop music.
Still, one of Hardy’s mixtapes is available on YouTube. Entitled, Falling on Your Arse, the project was released in 1999. Although he has never spoken about the recording of the mixtape, he has revealed that to get into the zone and record the rap-inspired, gravelly voice of Venom, he likes to have a separate studio session.
In a 2018 interview with Cinemovie, the film’s director, Ruben Fleischer, spoke about how Hardy captures the unique voice, explaining, “He would do this incredible thing before we shot scenes with Venom where he would record the whole scene as scripted between Eddie and Venom.”
He concluded, “Then they would take out Eddie’s voice, and then he would put in an earwig where he would be able to hear and then so in the middle of a scene, if Venom starts talking to him, they would play his recording of the Venom voice in his ear so he had something to react to.”